Ed Gamble on his day by day London marathon training regime

Prolific comedian Ed Gamble is about to run his second marathon for the type 1 diabetes charity JDRF. We asked him how prep changes the second time around, how he keeps himself motivated on a 20-mile run and how he keeps healthy on the road

Ed Gamble is a funny man, so funny that it's hard not to break down mid-conversation with him. He's also, clearly, insane, because he's about to run his second London marathon.

“The first time I did it was for the challenge, as I’d done no exercise previously in my life and I’d got into running,” he explained. “I did it for JDRF and this time they asked me to do it again and I’d had two glasses of wine when they’d sent me the email. It’s awful isn’t it?”

JDRF, for those unaware, is a type 1 diabetes charity. Gamble, himself, has type 1 diabetes. It's a natural fit, even though it might seem as if running 26.2 miles with low blood sugar levels feels like a handicap too far.

“I’m very into the work that they do, in terms of putting money into research to find a cure,” explained Gamble. “I cope with it alright, but it would be really nice if people didn’t have it.”

How does preparing for a marathon change when you've already done it once? “I don’t think my preparation has changed that much. I like it up to a point, I like the long runs, I can plod along for ages,“ he said. “What worries me is that once I hit 22 miles the first time I got a horrible cramp in my leg, so I had to spend the rest of it kicking my legs like a cancan.”

When you throw into the mix that Gamble is also touring, it makes for a real perfect storm of “reasons training for a marathon becomes really difficult”. So we wanted to know: how the bloody hell is he doing it? Answers: M&S salads, roleplay and a good sense of humour.

If you want to support Ed and his run, you can donate to him and JDRF here and if you want to see a very funny man perform live, you can buy tickets for his tour here.

Monday

“Monday is starting fresh, beginning of the week, so I tend to eat healthily as I destroyed myself over the weekend, eating absolutely awfully.

I’m very bad at routines, so I won’t have the same meal on a Monday as I normally do. That’s so boring, life’s too short to start doing that.

Monday is fairly healthy. I always run in the morning and exercise before my brain’s caught up with what I’m doing. If I give it an hour my brain will say, ‘Well, why would I go for a run?’ When you wake up you feel clinically insane and then I wake up halfway round, so then I run back. Monday is quite a light run – 40 minutes.

I don’t eat any breakfast really, due to the diabetes, I don’t want to inject any insulin. I’ve been eating a lot of poke recently, because it feels fun but good for you. You can mix it up, remix it. You can put some mango in. I’m big into that because it feels healthy.

If I’m gigging, if I’m on the road, them putting Waitrose and M&S into road service stations has done every comedian a world of good. You can vaguely eat healthily.”

Tuesday

“Another run. I just sort of follow a training plan on the Virgin London marathon website, so you do a ten minute easy run, 15 minute threshold run (I don’t know what my threshold is; it wasn’t that) and then a five minute easy run, 15 minute threshold, ten minute easy run – sort of an hour run but varying the pace. I’d love to watch a video of me doing that because I can’t imagine what I look like changing pace. I must be changing from the speed of a snail to the speed of another snail.

And stretching. I didn’t stretch a lot for the last marathon and now I have the body of an old man.

I ate some eggs today – apparently that’s healthy. I always feel like I’m doing the right thing if I eat some eggs and it’s like poke, you can jazz it up, although today I made a mistake with the eggs...

I do a food podcast, so we get sent a lot of stuff, and I say that as if I haven’t openly advertised for people to send us stuff. So I got sent some gochujang, which is very nice, but what I will say is don’t put it in scrambled eggs. It changes the consistency of the eggs and the colour of the eggs and they’re essentially diarrhoea. It tasted very nice, but do not put it in your eggs.”

Wednesday

“My cleaner comes on Wednesday so I’ve got to get out the flat. I go to the gym, I don’t really know what I’m doing, it’s just to break up the running week but I will end up going on the running machine. I will lift some weights as a gesture to the rest of my body, maybe some kettlebells, which I’ve seen on the internet. The ones with the wires that you pull up, I'll do that. Inevitably what I’ll do is lift the weights that the last person left it on, but if that’s too heavy I will change immediately. Bit of stretching, that sort of thing. But I will pick up a heavy thing now and again.

I get into phases, so if I’m not training for the marathon I’ll get into something. I got into spin classes but I had to stop because one of the instructors got on my nerves. He asked us all to close our eyes and pretend we were doing the running of the bull but on bikes. We had to get away from the bull, but obviously there’s a bit where you go slower, so he explained it as an alleyway we hid from the bull in and then it picked up the pace again and he had to explain that.

I went to F45 for a bit. I quite enjoyed that but it’s too expensive for what it is. The one I went to was in quite a small room with a lot of equipment. It’s like someone’s living room but they’re charging you hundreds of pounds. I quite like the intensity of it and I get bored easily so changing every 30 seconds is good, but I am just jumping up and down on a box and that cost me £70.”

Thursday

“I’m away all weekend so I’ll have to do another run on Thursday. What I like on the training plan is sometimes there’ll be a 20 minute run, which seems pointless but you’re doing what you’re told. I don’t mind it, a very small bit of exercise, but I will still eat like I’ve run 20 miles.

I have to get in the car after that and drive to Shrewsbury and do a gig and come back again. It’s just food from service stations and talking to my tour manager.

I prefer M&S, if you’re asking, there’s some good salads. The superfood salad, there’s one with carrot mash in it, sort of like a whipped up carrot thing. It’s nicer than it sounds. I normally go for that rather than a sandwich.”

Friday

“I’ll have to do a very long run on Friday but everything else is scaled down. I’ve got to do 20 miles. I live in a very good area – I live right by the Thames – so I can run ten miles on the river path and then turn back round. It sounds boring but it changes along the way.

I’ve fallen over on the route before, scarred my knee up. Sometimes when I’m running those long routes I have to pretend I’m someone else to get through it. If it’s raining I pretend I’m in the army. If it’s horrible weather I do have to pretend I’m in the middle of the war. I’ve never told anyone that before. But also there’s a lot of nice dogs.”

Saturday

“Saturdays, especially this week, and other weeks, because I’m on tour I’m not doing any exercise. I’m staying late in bed, rolling around, doing nothing. I want to look at my step counter at the end of the day and see I’ve done less than 3,000 steps. I know you’re supposed to do 10,000 a day but if you’ve done 30,000 on a Friday I think that balances out.

I have to go to Newcastle and Carlisle and I can’t be bothered to find a running route in Carlisle. I’ve run out of soldier characters. Train to Carlisle, then straight to the hotel and then to the venue, do the show, straight back to the hotel. I’ve stopped drinking because of the marathon. I’ll start again after but if I hadn’t done that I’d probably drink some red wine in my room on my own. That’s simultaneously as bleak and not as bleak as it sounds.”

Sunday

“Train over to Newcastle and then almost exactly the same situation. I'll maybe go to the cinema, go to a solid chain restaurant – a Nando’s is probably in the offing. Spice level is ‘hot’, it’s definitely there but not unmanageable. Half chicken, chargrilled veg, halloumi, olives, sometimes the quinoa salad. Wait until I try that shit in Carlisle. I think they’ll have to ship it in.”